Tomorrow, when Manchester City travels to Everton, it will mark one week since the club broke the record for consecutive wins, across all competitions, by an English club. The 15th consecutive surpassed Preston (from 1892) and Arsenal (ending in 1987).
“It means and shows how special these players are,” manager Pep Guardiola said after the win at the Liberty Stadium which was also his 200th as City manager.
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“I know we have broken an all-time record, beating Preston and Arsenal, so now it belongs to us. This record will be broken for sure because sport is like this. It is a lot and in this toughest period, in the Christmas and wintertime, to do what we have done so far is quite remarkable.
“But the important thing is the way we are still playing and our consistency. We are just thinking of the next one and we have an incredibly tough week ahead of us and we are going to approach it game by game.”
Tomorrow night will be consecutive win #17 if they achieve it, and it’s a victory that would place them 10 points clear at the top, of their closest rival, intracity neighbors United.
It feels, right now, like City will keep on winning forever, but that is obviously not the case.
“There are a lot of games left to play and a lot can happen,” Guardiola said at a press conference today.
“All I think about is Everton. We are in mid-February and there are a lot of points. We’ll drop points and that’s the moment I expect to see the reaction of all of us.
“Two months ago we were not in any thoughts to win the Premier League, now we are only contenders it looks like.”
He’s right, just a couple months ago, City was way down the table in 12th place, and not many were bullish on their league title prospects. Now here they are, essentially champions-elect, on the eve of playing their game in hand.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.